The new Nintendo 2DS system gives you all the features of the Nintendo 3DS and Nintendo 3DS XL, minus 3D viewing. And the price makes the world of Nintendo games even more accessible.

Curiously enough, the 2DS actually has only one screen - it's divided in two by the casing. The entire screen is touch-capable, but the top screen is covered by plastic so you can't touch it there. Like the Wii U's controller, this thing just looks weird and unwieldily, and while the price is nice, I doubt it will turn Nintendo's fortunes around.

Imagine a phone and/or tablet designed and built by Nintendo, with a proper integrated gamepad, capable of output to external displays, with access to Nintendo's entire back catalog of games - from the NES, through the Game Boy, SNES, Nintendo64, GameCube, DS, and Wii (if compatible with non-motion controls). Of course, new games can be published as well.

Nintendo should not be making yet another device to carry aside from your phone. They should be making a phone.

In most games you where supposed to use the joystick and trigger with your left hand while control the rest of the actions with your right hand, however there here a few games where there where also actions mapped to the D-Pad as well as a left shoulder button, which you had to smack the controller into your leg in order to hit without moving your hands.

I don't recall playing *any* games like that, so they were probably shitty games to begin with by not-so-great third-party developers. I wouldn't blame bad game design on the system or its controller.

Reading comprehension failure much? Both are terrible designs.

Oh, I comprehended it correctly. It's just that I am in 100% complete disagreement with you. The N64 design was a nice evolution; the "original" Xbox controller was a piece of shit. No comparison, and it's insane to be lumping the two together.

If that where the case then Nintendo would have sued over the controller design, the fact is the CD addon for the SNES that the Playstation became was going to use the SNES's controller just as the SegaCD and 32X used the Genesis controller.

Sony would have likely been sued, in fact, if they would have used Nintendo's superior cross-shaped D-Pad. I believe they owned a specific patent, which Sony was able to get past by slightly modifying the design of the D-Pad and recessing it under the plastic so it takes the form of four "buttons". After all this time the patent has probably long been expired, yet Sony systems still have the same crap design. Other companies over the decades have come up with much better D-Pad designs.

What weird way do you hold the Sony controllers? Everyone I've ever seen grab it grabs it the same way, thumbs on the buttons or sticks, pointers resting between the shoulder buttons. You don't use the tips of your fingers, you roll your fingers across the bottons and you use both the end and middle portions of your thumbs to hit the buttons. Within 5 mins of playing something like MGS most people have mastered the pressure sensitive buttons so that they can hold up enemies instead of just shooting them instantly.

I hold it like I would hold the Super NES controller; sometimes with my fingers resting below the shoulder buttons because it's more comfortable, but if I need to use them I might occasionally rest them on the L2/R2 buttons. It is very uncomfortable for me to reach for the L1/R1 buttons, and I tend to hate games that make heavy use of them.

Oh, and the analog buttons... you just brought up another of my most despised features. A button should NOT be analog if you have no way to measure exactly how far it is being pressed. The Dual Shock II is the absolute *worst* controller for racing games I have ever used, period. I don't even want to think of all the times I'm holding X, thinking I'm giving it gas, but the damn thing stops accelerating at 20-40 MPH. Same with brakes. It is horribly bad.